


Light of My Lantern

by PercyByssheShelley



Category: Zombies Run!
Genre: F/M, M/M, Pre-Canon, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-17
Updated: 2012-12-17
Packaged: 2017-11-21 08:22:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/595577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PercyByssheShelley/pseuds/PercyByssheShelley
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam had no idea when it came to girls. It was comforting to know that even after the complete collapse of society, some things remained the same.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Light of My Lantern

**Author's Note:**

  * For [foundwanders](https://archiveofourown.org/users/foundwanders/gifts).



Sam wasn't sure if it was late autumn or early winter when he met Alice. It was during those muddy uncertain middle weeks, with iron grey skies and morning frosts, but no actual snow. 

At the time, Abel was just a cluster of tents, protected by a wall that was largely conceptual. Some sections of the town were shielded by barricades built from barrels and old doors and tangled lengths of barbed wire. But for the most part the wall was human, and everyone took a shift roaming the perimeter with a length of pipe or axe.

They met when she unzipped the one-man hike tent he already shared with Sam and Jack. 'Personal space', like 'clean water' and 'delicious food', was a term that had once had meaning, but had been chipped away after day by day of an ever growing ratio of survivors to supplies. 

So he didn't think much of it when she crawled up his chest and tucked her head into his shoulder.

"Your hair smells awful," he said, pushing it out of his face. 

"You think you smell like a bucket of rainbows?" she mumbled into his neck. 

"Both of you shut up," Jack said, rolling over and flinging an arm across the two of them. 

 

...

The next day Sam was up on the roof of the farmhouse, helping Janine turn a solar array installed to support the occasional weekend visit into something that could power a village with dozens of residents. If handing her screwdrivers while she did the actual work counted as helping. 

The breeze had a knife edge that suggested it was snowing somewhere upwind, so he wasn't surprised to see that the people coming off the construction day shift were heading straight for the fire pit in the centre of town. His bunkmates were easy to pick out in the small crowd, with Eugene leaning into Jack's side, the new girl walking a few paces behind them. 

"Alice," Janine said, following his gaze. "She'll be a good addition. She must know a thing or two, to have survived so long out there." 

Evan, Janine and the Major were sliding that kind of assessment more and more into conversations, making sure that everyone understood that newcomers needed to be _assets_. It didn't take a genius to know what was going to happen once the wall was completed. 

"Feel free to go and join them. I don't really need you here." Janine winced visibly as soon as the overly honest words were out. Sam just shrugged it off. 

Janine had lit up when he introduced himself as an engineering student, probably envisioning the two of them working miracles together. But he hadn't seen that expression again since he started shadowing her. Since she figured out that he wasn't an asset. 

But he was fine. He was already inside the wall. 

...

"I’m still a little bitter that I don’t have a more interesting ‘where were you when...’ story. I spent my last civilised moments buying muffins in a bakery. Not even one of those cool bohemian types, with couches and kitschy art and wannabe writers everywhere. Just a little hole in the wall.” Eugene gave Sam a quick nod when he arrived, but didn't interrupt his story. Alice shifted over a little on the overturned barrel she was using as a seat, making room for him.

“I was at a music festival,” Jack said. 

"I think I've heard this story before," Eugene said, a small smile on his face. 

"Shh. You like this story. It's about true love. And in the end, there are zombies." 

"Oh, I am so bored of zombies," Sam interrupted. 

"I agree," Alice said. "Boo zombies. I want to hear more about these muffins."

Everybody leaned forward a little bit, nodding their heads in agreement. True love was great and all, but fresh baked goods, those were hard to find these days. 

And so Jack regaled them with the tale of how the Monday special was cranberry orange. This spurred a ten minute conversation, which detoured through 'canned fruit just doesn't taste the same' and 'there is nothing I wouldn't do for just one fresh egg' before petering out. 

Jack and Eugene left first, and the others quickly followed. Nobody had the energy for a late night.

Sam put a hand on Alice's elbow when she stood up. "The boys and I have an unspoken agreement that they go back to the tent first, and I take the long route home. The route where you circle the hospital tent three times."

"That's fine," she said, and pulled away from him so that she could grab the bucket of sand they used to extinguish the fire each night. “Turns out I came to the wrong tent. I'm supposed to be bunked with Jody, Maxine and Sara."

He felt a twinge of disappointment, which he put down to jealousy that she got to live with three other people in a two man tent, a much better ratio than the one he put up with. He couldn't possibly have been looking forward to spending evenings with her, loitering awkwardly by the hospital.

She hovered over the remains of the fire for a minute, looking at him like he was missing his cue, then jammed her hands into the pockets of her hoodie and walked away.

Sam had no idea when it came to girls. It was comforting to know that even after the complete collapse of society, some things remained the same.

...

By the time the first blades of grass pushed through the beige mush that was once pristine white snow their supplies had been sapped to the point that they were eating rice doused in cooking oil and sugar by the spoonful just to get enough calories. Maxine started to fret about scurvy. 

In a roundabout way, that was how Sam, Eugene, Jack and Alice found themselves sitting at Janine's kitchen table sorting through a bucket of mobile phones they'd traded from Skoobs. They were the odd-jobsmen of Abel – skilled enough to be frequently pulled off the security and construction shifts, but not enough to have carved out their own niche. 

Jack and Eugene were sifting through each phone looking for songs and movies and e-books that they didn't already have saved on the town's communal hard drive, then deleting everything else. When they were done, Sam loaded each one with maps and first aid manuals and noisemakers, anything that might be useful to supply runners. 

Alice had the worst job, which she claimed before any of them could get a word in edgewise. She was looking through the texts and voice mails, rummaging for any nugget of new information about the zombs, because you never know what seemingly insignificant fact could be the key to it all.

But the messages are all the same, phone after phone. _I love you. Where are you? Please be OK. I'm sorry for everything. I love you. I love you. I love you._

Every time Sam looked over at her she met his eyes and smiled. But then she placed the last one in front of Jack, and silently walked out. 

He found her on the steps, watching the sun set over the wall. She didn't turn to look when he sat beside her, but she leaned into him, and didn't shy away when he wrapped an arm around her waist.

…

The sun was shining, the birds were singing, and Sam was fairly sure he was in the opening scene of a horror movie. Not traditional Hammer horror fare, with misty moors and a gibbous moon. A modern horror film, with tweeting birds, sweet sunshine and soft new growth pushing its way towards the sky. The modern kind that wrung horror from the juxtaposition of the pastoral and new life with sudden death. 

Damn. Sam was minutes from painful death by zombie, and he was going to spend his last breaths having flashbacks to high school English. 

He swung around when something rustled behind him, hefting the chunk of fence paling he had been issued as a weapon. He didn't have a chance against one of the shuffling undead, but it didn't hurt to make a good show. 

Whatever was coming towards him sped up. His attempt at a valiant last stand crumbled when he stepped backwards, lost his footing and tumbled into a pile of branches. He stopped breathing altogether, until Alice emerged from the trees. She had her axe slung across her shoulders, her arms draped across it like the most beautiful scarecrow he had ever seen. 

"Nice day for it, huh?" she said. She looked happier than he had ever seen her before, her body loose and relaxed. 

Like she belonged out here, he thought. She had found her place, which was great. Really great. He was clearly never going to be let out of the gates again, but he was happy for her. He had no reason to feel a little queasy, just because she no longer belonged in the club of people still trying to find their place in Abel. He still had Jack and Eugene, they could be aimless drifter bros for life. That was a lot easier to fit on a t-shirt than 'Aimless drifter bros and one sister for life'. 

He shook his head to clear the odd thought away. "Sure is. I don't suppose you've seen a township? It's about yay high, answers to the name of Abel? I swear I left it around here somewhere."

She chuckled, and he felt a little thrill of victory for making her laugh. "I might know the one you mean. Is it an olive drab colour, smells a little bit like old cheese?”

"It does a little, doesn't it?"

She nodded sagely. "I've been meaning to complain to housekeeping. I'm impressed Runner One – my quadrant is completely the other side of Abel from yours. To get this lost, you must have covered twice as much ground as the rest of us did."

"Well, that's why I'm Runner One and you're just Runner Five. Because I'm an overachiever." He relaxed his grip on the fence paling. Now that she was here to save him, he felt almost as loose and light as she looked. "If I'm Runner One, does that make me your boss?"

"If you're the boss, then you should lead us home," her voice dripped with mock respect, "Runner One."

He held his hands up in surrender. "Now that you mention it, I don't like the whole Runner One, Runner Two thing. I am not a number, I am a free man."

She dropped the axe from her shoulders, letting it swing by her side so that the other hand was free to grab his. She pulled him to his feet, and strode off into the trees without dropping his hand. 

A few minutes later she looked over her shoulder at him. "The phones don't work," she said, her voice low in case there were zombs in the area. "We can't roam about staring down at a phone screen, we have to be on the alert constantly. It's no wonder you got lost." 

Sam nodded, seeing no benefit to telling her that he had given up on the map within minutes of leaving the gates. Maps had always confused him, and he'd been sure that if he just kept track of the landmarks he was passing, he would find his way back with no trouble. 

"We need a better solution." She gave him a hopeful wide-eyed look, like he might have all the answers, but he couldn't concentrate. All he was aware of was the way his fingers were squeezed between hers.

For the rest of the day he could feel the ghost of her thumb where it had been pressed into his wrist.

...

"How do you ask someone out, post-apocalypse?" Sam leaned on his shovel, admiring the last of the raised beds he had spent all morning filling with soil. "It's not like I can just casually slip 'Hey, lets get some coffee sometime' into conversation." 

"Simon has a bag of coffee beans." Eugene looked up from the other side of the bed, where he was pressing seeds down into the soil with one finger. "He's willing to trade it for a copy of _A Storm of Swords_ , or any brand of craft beer." 

"I was never a big Martin fan." Sam watched the way that Eugene pressed his palm to the soil above each seed, as if willing it to grow. Abel didn't have anyone with a green thumb, and they were all nervous about the garden. Seeds had a shelf life, and there would be no garden next year if they couldn't keep them alive long enough to go to seed again. 

"Maxine has a copy. She'll trade it for a clean t-shirt." 

Sam gestured to his chest, emblazoned with the smiling face of Justin Bieber. "You think I would be wearing this if I had more than one shirt?"

Eugene shrugged. "I just figured you were a Belieber." He wiped his hands clean on his trousers, and pulled a notebook out of his breast pocket. "She's also willing to play ball for a can of deodorant or a Terry's chocolate orange," he said, flipping through the pages. 

Sam sighed. "You know what all those things have in common? I don't have them." 

"You could talk to Evan. He's willing to trade anything for a hand-"

"No."

"-putting together his still. Where did your mind go?"

"Why do people come to you about this stuff, anyway?" Sam asked quickly, ignoring the question.

Another shrug. "I guess I'm easy to catch."

Sam smiled, not sure if he was allowed to laugh at that. "There has to be a more convenient system. You could put up a noticeboard." 

"Trading within Abel is pointless, we're just passing the same crap back and forth. What we really need is a way to set up trades with the other towns, and the people holed up." He was still flipping thoughtfully through the notepad, a small smile on his face. Even if he didn't know it yet, Sam could see the spark catching. That was one more member checking out of his little club. Two members, since where Eugene went, so did Jack. Which was fine. He could be a one man club. It would make the t-shirt order cheaper.

...

Sam shifted in his chair and grimaced at the way his sweat-sticky shirt pulled against his skin as he moved. The communications office was cobbled together from a bunch of old pallets and the roof from a garden shed, and by nine in the morning it was his own personal sauna.

“Can you hear me, Alice?” he asked.

“Runner Five,” Janine corrected absently. She looked distracted, staring out of the open door at the clouds that had been gathering all morning. The weather had been taunting them for days, the clouds building and building then dissipating by lunch time. He never thought he would live to curse blue skies and perfect spring days, but the water tanks were still sitting empty, and if it didn’t rain soon they would all go mad.

“Can you hear me, Runner Five?”

“Clear as a bell. I’ve found the security office, but the camera system is password protected.” He expected her voice to be tinny and distant, but it was like she was standing right next to him, mouth to his ear.

“Have you tried ‘password’?”

“That’s ridiculous,” she said, but he heard the sound of keys clacking. “This is a security office, they couldn’t possibly be that... I’m in. Oh my god.”

“Most common password in the world.” He didn’t even try not to sound smug. “Most companies don’t change from the default. One time when I was with the university radio station we managed to hack into the security camera outside the Chancellor’s-”

“Mr Yao, perhaps it would be more useful to tell her what to do next?”

“Right. Obviously. Go through each tab, and switch off anything that looks like a privacy setting. These systems tend to be idiot proof, because as we’ve just demonstrated, most people who own them are idiots.”

He stared at the screen, waiting for her to tell him that she’d hit a dead end, that the whole ridiculous scheme was a waste of her time. Instead the screen lit up with the image of a food court, the tables and chairs scattered about like a hurricane had blown through. The screen split as Alice moved on to the next camera, again and again until his screen was a kaleidoscope of stores and back hallways.

“I can see you!” he said. The tiny figure at the bottom of his screen startled and looked up. “This is amazing. I’m like the Penelope Garcia to your Derek Morgan. No, even better- I’m the Oracle to your Batman.”

“You do know you’re casting yourself as the woman in these scenarios? Is this going to end with me coming home to find you trying on my clothes?” She grinned up at the camera. “I’m not saying I’d mind, I’d just like some forewarning.”

“I think you've got more serious problems than Mr Yao stretching out your lacy underthings.” Janine tapped the screen. In a nearby hallway a lump was beginning to stir. Sam had written it off as a pile of clothes dropped by a looter, but it was moving across the floor. “That's a crawler, and it definitely knows you're there, Runner Five.” 

“Bugger. I was hoping there would be time to swing by Marks and Spencer and get you a new shirt, Sam.” 

Alice shot one last grin to the camera, then sprinted through the door. She disappeared out of range before he could tell her that it was fine, he didn't need to buy a t-shirt anymore.  
…

Sam woke up when his hammock shifted wildly, sending his knee banging into the wall of the comms station. He flailed his arms, which didn't help matters.

"Stop it, you're unbalancing it," Alice hissed. She settled her weight beside him, tucking her feet against his.

"I'm unbalancing it? What are you doing in here? Did somebody die?" He blinked in confusion at her. “It wasn't Jack, was it? He's the only other person alive who knows what a coaxial cable is, he can't die."

“I know what a coaxial cable is," she snapped, yanking his pillow so there was room to rest her head beside his. “Nobody died." She paused, and screwed up her face. “Nobody died recently. Before that, everybody died. My neighbour died."

Oh. It was one of those middle of the night, holy-crap-the-world-ended panic attacks.

She carried on. "I never actually met her, but her azaleas were lovely."

"My neighbour died too," he mumbled, still a little sleep-drunk. "He didn't grow azaleas. He was growing pot in his bathroom, if that counts." 

"Do you think it's ever coming back? The world?"

"You mean like, fast food restaurants and broadband internet?" Her hip was digging into his side. He wrapped an arm around her waist and shifted her as carefully as he could so that she was half on top of him, where she couldn't do as much damage to his kidneys. "Maybe. Look at me. A week ago I slept literally on top of two other people. Now I live in a garden shed. By this time next year we'll probably be painting our houses in approved earth tones and trying to make the Johnsons get rid of their distasteful lawn ornaments." 

She considered this for a moment, then nodded. They were so close on the pillow that the movement made her forehead bump against his, but she didn't pull away. They swung in silence, heads tilted together. 

“Your hair still smells awful,” Sam blurted out, because even after the apocalypse there was no moment he couldn't ruin. 

“Shut it, rainbow bucket.” She leaned forward and pressed her lips against his own. He flailed again, sending them crashing into the wall with a bang that probably woke the entire township, but she didn't complain.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to oxoniensis for the beta. 
> 
> Title taken from the Josh Ritter song 'Lantern'.
> 
> "I am not a number, I am a free man" is a quote from The Prisoner.
> 
> Penelope Garcia and Derek Morgan are characters from the show Criminal Minds. Oracle and Batman are, unsurprisingly, from Batman.


End file.
